Counter Information—Counter Commerce—From Behind the Counter

January 31, 2007

Just a Little Miss

I finally got around to watching Little Miss Sunshine. I've been procrastinating this entire time because I was worried I wouldn't dislike the movie, thus ruinning my top 5 list. With everyone loving this movie so much, and contrarian that I am, I thought I would have to come up with some dirt to justify not liking it. Now having seen it, I realize I don't have to actively dislike it. It's just a mediocre movie, and not worth the loathing.

Pan's Labyrinth, on the other hand, is every bit the movie critics made it out to be, and then some. It reminds me of a quotation from La Pasionaria, speaking of the Spanish Civil War, "They took the cities, but we had the better songs." And that, is still the case. Art is for the humane, and humane art, whether it is brutal, or vulgar, or graphic - and none of these are a contradiction in terms - will always be the province of people with whose dreams for humanity run the deepest.

With Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro has made an anarchist fantasy, wrapped in a gothic film, within a horror movie, nestled in an anti-authoritarian fable. And the movie succeeds in each attempt, and at every level. Watching it is almost like the opposite of Dante descending realm by realm into the Inferno. Instead of Dante's guide Virgil, del Toro gives us Ofelia, to guide us as we wend our way through the labyrinth of modern authoritarianism on our way to a more sublime world. A world where the ideals of the red and black flag waving partisans of the Spanish Civil War emerge victorious; even if only at the end of the movie.